


The Exterminate-a-Rat Raid

by Ione



Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: Enemies, Gen, World War II, a matter of honor, raiders of the sands, truce between enemies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-31 00:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8556262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ione/pseuds/Ione
Summary: There's a price on Captain Dietrich's head for a mass murder he didn't order, leading to capture, uneasy truce, and above all, moral dissonance.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nomad (nomadicwriter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomadicwriter/gifts).



> Timing somewhere in the second season . . .

 

Captain Hans Dietrich hid behind a prickly desert scrub, binoculars resting on a flat stone as he watched the makeshift airfield below. Luftwaffe spotter planes had reported movement in the area over the past couple weeks, and his Bedouin spies had located the airfield. Dietrich's company had been ordered to execute preliminary attack.

Dietrich had moved his company in over two successive nights from a camp on the other side of the ridge behind him, proceeding at a snail’s pace at night, and holing up under stifling camo through the long hours of daylight, while he had led a detachment to run decoy operations.

Yesterday he'd finished the decoy, and traveled all night. He now lay in the heat of day, watching what looked like a unit of raw young SAS recruits under the direction of men recovering from illnesses or wounds, who refused to be demobbed or weren't quite ready for RTU. Since the early hour when Dietrich had taken up his position, twelve Spitfires had flown in before the gathering stormclouds had made further landings impossible. The new hangar now had a fleet of twelve parked in it, in the process of being fueled up.

Dietrich lifted his gaze to sweep the horizon. Rommel taught that timing was everything. “And though I first wrote about infantry, the same principal applies to tank warfare,” Rommel had said when Dietrich and the other company commanders had gathered in his HQ after the El Agheila operation in spring of ’41.

Dietrich brushed an insect off his cheek with one finger, then steadied the binoculars as he swept again, his mind moving back to those early days. How surprised he’d been by the breathless white sunlight, the stunning heat—with worse to come, the veterans of the original panzer division warned the new arrivals. And yet, spirits had been high in Rommel's cadre of captains.

Below, the SAS recruits ambled to the next plane, the sentries obviously more interested in shade than in gazing outward. The recruits ignored a clump of Bedouin moving along the far ridge—the same way they’d ignored Dietrich’s paid Bedouin spies.

Stirling’s experienced men would not have made that error—but they’d moved on to survey and lay out another airfield in order to leapfrog their planes deep into German-held territory.

Dietrich was part of an operation to put a halt to it.

Ach so. There was the growl of the halftrack. Dust rose beyond the makeshift hangar—no more than a covered shed. The recruits really were half-asleep. One shuffled, head bent against the punishing sun, lugging two jerry-cans of either water or what they called brew-up. He ambled toward the sentry posts. Were they all fighting sleep as he was?

No. The sentry at the east end began gesticulating wildly, then ducked into his kiosk, arm pumping the hand-crank. The wail of his alarm beat the somnolent air.

One by one heads turned, then the recruits began running around, small figures like an Oberuferer Weihnachtsspiel upon the vast desert stage. Two trucks armed with Vickers guns burst out from the hangar and pelted off toward the halftrack, which began circling about, raising a dust storm. The judder of machine-gunfire beat the air, drawing the English fire, staccato on a higher note.

The trucks vanished into the dust on pursuit—trucks, not jeeps. Of course Troy’s pestiferous patrol was not here. Dietrich had personally led a convoy of nearly unsalvageable trucks painted up to look new, over rough terrain, in order to see to that. Even so, he’d learned to never relax his vigilance.

The rest of the English recruits—they looked like a gaggle of schoolboys—clumped together, peering off to the west to watch the supposed firefight.

Dietrich felt the vibration before he heard the engine-growl of his main force as they mounted the ridge to his right. They shifted gear and rumbled down the slope. The recruits whirled, eyes and mouths round holes of shock. Textbook Rommel: decoy, strike on the flank.

The English pelted to their makeshift hangar. An enterprising pair bolted for the two camo-netted 25-pounders, but it was too late.

Dietrich’s two tanks ran down that smooth airfield, getting in their target practice as first the fuel trucks burst into flames, and then, one by one, the newly-feuled planes. The recruits scattered like kegels, arms curved over their heads protectively against falling debris.

The entire airfield disappeared in roiling smoke as the last tank roared by, smashing the laboriously laid down field.

And last, the halftracks full of soldiers to round up the disconsolate defenders. _A very short war for you youngsters_ , Dietrich thought as he watched his men motioning the English together into a ragged line, then march them toward his trucks. Life in a POW camp would not be exciting. _But it will be a lot safer than the Russian front is for our boys_.

Such thoughts were never expressed—even to his cousin in the Luftwaffe, whose brother had vanished a few months ago somewhere over the Ukraine. That was the gamble of the professional soldier.

Dietrich waited until the last of the vehicles had climbed back over the ridge toward their old camp, which would now be in the midst of breaking down. Below Dietrich, the tower of smoke bent lazily eastward, revealing the utter ruin below. He existed in that tension between extreme urgency and waiting: important as it was to get the vehicles back to camp and move out before the expected retaliatory strike, he also had to take the time to inspect. It was never a good idea to hurry. Something might be overlooked.

He rose and retreated to his sand-battered, bullet-pocked yellow staff car, where his driver waited with the motor running. He sent an absent, frowning glance at those bullet holes, as he had done every day for the past month; they were a scarcely needed reminder of the Rat Patrol, his personal gadflies, but supplies were straining. First priority was the engines that constantly broke down because of the ubiquitous sand. His entire motorized fleet needed body work and repainting—sand was hell on paint—a job that could wait for the rainy season. He’d used this month’s allotment to furbish up that decoy convoy for the Rats to shoot up.

He allowed himself to feel mild triumph at the success of that ruse, then shut it away and motioned for his driver to proceed around the perimeter of the still-burning airfield. He saw no signs of life anywhere, though a vague sense nagged at him. But the pressure of timing was more adamant. Though the low, spreading gray of a coming thunderstorm had diffused the light just before he gave his men the signal to attack, he couldn’t trust it not to suddenly clear, allowing the British bombers at the main RAF camp to take to the air.

He waved the driver on, and they bucketed up the slope and over the hill, the driver expertly following the tracks laid down by the tranks. Dietrich picked up the clipboard and pen his excellent aide had left in the car, and with the practice of habit, began composing his report as the car bumped and jiggered at the fastest speed the driver dared. Inevitably Dietrich’s Fraktur ended up looking like shark’s teeth, but Corporal Kleiner was an expert in parsing it out and then smoothing the whole into proper report language as he typed it.

Dietrich finished his notes just as they arrived at the designated rendezvous, where men were busy setting up the new camp. As he’d expected, the tents had already been staked out, the men busy digging the _Donnerbalken_ —“thunder logs,” or latrines—and deploying the camouflage netting.

Wait. How many men—had they put the prisoners to work? No. Everyone was in desert camo.

As they descended into the wadi, the whole sharpened into detail—anomalies. He straightened to alertness. Unfamiliar vehicles—very new—unfamiliar men in crisp new uniforms standing guard at rigid parade rest as Dietrich’s own men scurried about. Who had shown up without letting him know? That many guards usually signified an officer of rank. Mechanics swarmed around new and old vehicles both, checking engines and refueling so they would be ready to move on command.

 _“Langsam, bitte,”_ Dietrich murmured, and Engel, his driver, obediently slowed.

Dietrich scanned the unfamiliar men before his staff car rounded the armorer’s net-shrouded area, revealing the command tent. And there, in pride of place, sat a long, low Daimler armored car, twin flags mounted on the front bumper.

A black Daimler. No one chose to ride in black vehicles for very long after a few long trips in the merciless heat. Judging by the length of the hood on the luxury car, definitely an officer of some rank.

Dietrich frowned. Colonel Leimer, his immediate superior, seldom interrupted the flow of an operation like this, and never in vehicles like that Daimler, so cumbersome in the desert.

It was then that Dietrich noticed the crisp new Afrika campaign cuffbands on the left sleeve of the reinforcements’ tropical uniforms and his suspicions heightened. Before he left the staff car he assumed the imperturbable demeanor he’d adopted as armor.

As he entered the command tent, he saw an unfamiliar figure wearing the gray-green coat of  . . . a major in the Sicherheitsdienst. It seemed they had been changing the insignia yet again—the Waffen-SS in specific, but the Allgemeine SS as well constantly readapted to look more like Wehrmacht. In spite of his _Ehrendolch_ , the dagger the SS were so fond of wearing, and the ‘tin-necktie’—the now nearly ubiquitous Knight’s Cross at the collar—this man in his shiny jackboots didn’t look like real army to Dietrich.

Because the SS _weren’t_ real army. Rommel had stipulated that the Allgemeine SS stay out of Afrika Corps for that very reason.

So it was with instant distrust that Dietrich observed the man salute with a stiff “Heil Hitler.”

Dietrich perforce responded, but already he was irritated. “Hauptmann Dietrich.” He gave his name, and no welcome.

If the newcomer noticed, he gave no sign. “Sturmbannführer Schmied of the SD. I am here on orders from Berlin, Hauptmann Dietrich.”

The man clicked his heels again, but at least he didn’t speak in the Hitlerian bark so many SS assumed. If anything, he over-enunciated, though that did not quite hide his bauerlicher accent. Schmied appeared to be thirty, maybe thirty-five, with the fair “Aryan” skin prized so much by the High Command, his white-blond hair a contrast to the black rim of his cap.

Dietrich handed his clipboard to Lance Corporal Kleiner, whose diffuse gaze and stiff parade rest conveyed some sort of message, but what?

“Though my driver did his best, I arrived too late to witness your triumph myself,” Schmied said with broad grin, his teeth very white against his pink, freshly sunburned face. “We reached your former camp just as your men returned in triumph. But the important point is, Berlin will be happy with my initial assessment, and instant command execution.”

Instant command execution?

Schmied leaned forward and tapped a folded paper lying on Dietrich’s camp desk. “Berlin feels there have been too few triumphs since Tobruk. Herr Himmler sent me personally to investigate, and to demonstrate our good will, I have brought a company of superior soldiers to bolster your force. Each man has earned his first class marksman and close combat training badge, and three hold sniper’s badges.” He paused, and when Dietrich said nothing, Schmied added in his precise voice, “Herr Himmler sent us to aid in trimming the detritus.”

“Detritus, Sturmbannführer Schmied?” Dietrich repeated.

“Inevitable in a long campaign, of course,” Schmied said with a wave of his hand, as if he spoke from long experience.

“Of course,” Dietrich murmured.

“Herr Himmler is convinced that a _clean_ campaign cuts like a sword—fast. Precise. Which in turn speeds victory.”

A clean campaign in the desert? Dietrich had heard that even the upper echelons of the Waffen-SS regarded Himmler, or ‘Reichsheini,’ as a toy soldier in spite of his glittering uniforms at the rallies. The rawest Wehrmacht recruit knew that Himmler, and his staff, did not get any closer to actual warfare than watching newsreels. In fact there was a lot of back room debate about what exactly they _did_ do besides march around Berlin and Hitler’s rumored work camps, looking tough. But that sort of talk could win you a personal interview with the Gestapo.

“Reichsführer Himmler could have sent me to observe the main army,” Schmied said, as Dietrich glanced sideways into the inner section, where he usually had his private quarters. Unfamiliar baggage sat beside the camp bed. One unfamiliar orderly was busy unpacking Schmied’s belongings, and another perched on a camp stool, sponging blood off a gray-green coat.

Blood?

Schmied grinned, showing off a fine set of very white teeth. “But he thinks Rommel needs help in exterminating the rats who gnaw the vitals of that army.”

* * *

“Dietrich did _what_?” Troy yelped.

Captain Boggs nodded, snatched off his cap, and rubbed a handkerchief over the dome of his forehead. The air under the corrugated tin of the makeshift command post could have baked bread.

“Shot them all,” he said, throwing his cap onto a side table. “Back of the head. Execution style. Roberts there inspected the bodies this very morning.”

Boggs lifted his round chin in the direction of the lean, dust-covered British lieutenant seated on the camp stool, brooding over his cigarette. “Sent to report to us. Seems Dietrich has gone and turned himself into a miniature Hitler. Since you and your boys have had the most run-ins with the bastard, I thought you’d be interested.”

Troy scowled. “That’s just it. We’ve had the most run-ins. We know Dietrich if anyone does. And that’s not his style.”

Boggs shook his head. “Guess it is now, because there was a witness. Roberts?”

Troy slewed around. “You saw Dietrich shoot a bunch of kids?”

“No, sir.” The lieutenant looked up from the cigarette he wasn’t smoking. In his clipped British accent, he said, “The jerries shot up the airfield. Rounded up our chaps. Smoke and fire everywhere—they missed young Flynn.”

He looked down again, and after a pause that began to stretch into silence, Boggs coughed and continued the explanation. “According to Roberts here, this kid Flynn was knocked a few yards by his truck blowing up—he’d been bringing a canteen of tea to his driver. Woke with the canvas cover half-smothering him, and the sound of a motor approaching. He spotted an open Kraut staff car, big palooka in it, captain’s tabs, light hair. Flynn went doggo under the canvas, then after the Kraut drove away, he wandered out, half-concussed. That’s when one of our guys on a dispatch run saw the smoke, headed in, and found Flynn mooching around in the desert, completely lost.”

Boggs paused to mop his head again, and glanced at Roberts, who just sat there, bony shoulders hunched, a thousand mile stare at the half-inch of ash on the end of the cigarette.

Boggs turned to Troy. “Chesik packed the kid on the back of his motorcycle, and took him straight to the Tommies.”

“A big palooka with light hair fits half-a-dozen Kraut captains in this sector alone,” Troy argued, though he couldn’t believe he was defending Dietrich even this much.

“True, but the kid also described the staff car—mentioned the bullet holes in the right front quarter panel. Made by a fifty cal, not one of theirs.”

“Okay, that sounds like Dietrich’s car.” Troy straightened upright. “We shot it up a month ago when we blew that weapons supply convoy out from under him. We’ve spotted him twice since—hasn’t done anything about those holes.”

Boggs nodded. _Give Troy and his boys short orders and a real long leash, and you’ll get the best results_ , his predecessor had said in his private briefing. So far, so true.

Boggs leaned over to tap his own cigarette ash, then poked the glowing tip at the big map behind him. “The Germans are running low on supplies, thanks to you Rats.” He gave a short nod of approval, which for Boggs was fulsome praise. “To finish up, after Chesik dropped off Flynn, the Tommies couldn’t sent Spitfires. Clouds too low. So they sent an armored patrol, with Roberts here a part of it. Tank tracks let to an abandoned camp along an old riverbed, bodies scarcely cold. Left behind for the vultures to find. Didn’t even have the decency to bury ‘em. Sent Roberts to let us know.”

“Dammit,” Troy muttered. “Damn it to hell.”

Boggs accepted this ecumenical judgment with a grunt of agreement, then Troy said, “Did you follow ‘em?”

Roberts raised bleak eyes. “Storm broke, obliterating the tracks. And they’d headed up into rocky country anyway. No tracks. We couldn’t push farther for a recce. Low on petrol. Had to turn back.” His head dropped again.

“So who else could it be?” Boggs asked.

“Damn it!” Troy exclaimed. “We had no idea—and here we were, all day, sitting on our thumbs while the monkey wrench boys overhaul the jeeps.”

Troy scowled. Now the routine he’d accepted as part of operations sounded suspicious. After every mission, mechanics dug the sand out of their gear boxes, furbished the brakes, and even replaced the axles. Something Dietrich had to know by now; the sand and terrain were so hard on the jeeps they never ran two missions in a row unless there were fresh vehicles, but right now the American resources were strained.

And Dietrich probably knew that, too.

Troy pinned Boggs with a narrow-eyed glare. “We thought Dietrich was out of his mind, running that convoy in a sandstorm yesterday. What you want to bet those brand new trucks we shot up were empty? He damn well decoyed us!”

Boggs grunted agreement. “Here’s what we do know. The Germans are going after those new RAF airstrips.”

Troy flicked his hand up in acknowledgment. He and the Rats had run outer perimeter scouting for the first airstrip a couple weeks back, as backup support while a major LRDG expedition scouted deep behind German lines. With supplies for both sides having to come from so far away, everyone was feeling the strain, and helped each other where they could.

Boggs jabbed the cigarette toward Troy. “Roberts says the British are going to abandon the airstrips. Krauts have to be on the way to take out the other two fields—they probably would have by now, if it hadn’t been for that storm.”

Troy nodded. Made tactical sense: send in Dietrich over land to take out the closest one, and deal with the farther ones from the air. ”That’s changed?” Troy asked.

“Got the message over the radio just now, while you were walking from the barracks. RAF's going after Dietrich.” Boggs’ broad, nicotine-stained finger tapped the map. “But these storms might keep the lid on the flyboys. I thought you might want to take a look-see first, since you’ve dealt with him.”

Boggs send another look at Roberts, then lowered his voice. “Fact is, Troy, O’Neal is putting an unofficial bounty on Dietrich’s head. Some of those were just kids—O’Neal put his sister’s boy with ‘em. Not even out of high school, or whatever the Brits call high school. Those boys were supposed to be safe, getting some hardening up building airstrips before they even started their training. Half of ‘em had never fired a weapon.”

Troy took in the the bleak expression on Roberts’ long face, and Boggs’s grim jawline. This was not the time to discuss what Dietrich might or might not be capable of doing. “Right. Thanks for letting us have first crack.”

He flicked a hand up in casual salute, and walked out of HQ, into the breathless humidity. A thick carpet of gray cloud pressed down, intensifying the heat.

He kept his thoughts to himself until he reached the base cantina, which had been set up in the remains of an old stone house that could have been ten years old or two thousand years old, architectural components having remained roughly the same. Canvas had been pulled over the uneven walls, more or less warding sun and sand. A few guys hunched at makeshift tables on benches and camp chairs. The place stank of canvas, smoke, alcohol, and sweat, with the tang of motor oil. Home.

Troy peered into the murk and spotted Moffitt, Hitch, and Tully holding down a table in the far corner. An untouched beer sat before the empty space. Troy dropped onto the bench beside Hitch, took a long pull of the warm, flat beer, then in a low voice began to fill them in. When he got to the bodies—

“What?” Moffitt exclaimed.

“Huh?” Hitch yelped.

Tully shook his head slowly.

Heads turned their way, then back again, and conversations resumed, the air up against the canvas hazing blue-gray with cigarette smoke.

“That’s what _I_ thought,” Troy said. “I believe Dietrich took out the airstrip, all right. His staff car was spotted by a survivor the Krauts missed in their sweep. And the operation’s got his fingerprints all over it: decoy, tanks, blow stuff up, corral the prisoners. But if the scouts found the shot-up prisoners at an abandoned camp, that doesn’t prove Dietrich left ‘em.”

“Yeah,” Hitch said. “Shooting kids in the back of the head? That sounds like Gestapo.”

“I might remind you,” Moffitt drawled, “that Dietrich is a German. The people who legalized the Gestapo. He might be changing his tactics. I’m very certain Hitler would approve.”

Hitch muttered something about Hitler’s probable genealogy, and where he could stuff it.

Tully shifted his toothpick from left to right.

“Okay, okay.” Troy lowered his voice more. “The way I see it is this. Boggs can’t say anything. These weren’t our guys, and none of us were there. The Brits are griped. They should be. Nobody’s arguing that. But if O’Neal sends his guys in hot and heavy and they wipe out Dietrich, the Krauts are sure to retaliate in kind. And maybe replace Dietrich with something worse.”

Moffitt murmured, “I will say that it’s been a steady wicket with Dietrich so far. I’m just afraid that has changed.”

“That’s what we have to find out,” Troy said. “Here’s where it gets dicey. Right now we’ve got thick clouds, so the Tommies can’t send the RAF up. That gives us a little time. More, if we make a side trip to Al Qadim, and bust up the Krauts’ airstrip there as extra precaution. That ought to buy us a day or so of getting across this expanse of desert without being seen up top by the Krauts, if the clouds do lift.”

Troy eyed his team. Moffitt’s lip curled, his light eyes taking on a familiar mad stare. Hitch polished his glasses.

Tully shifted his toothpick from right to left.

For Troy, that was as good as stirring speeches. Better, because it was faster. He finished off his beer, slammed the mug down, and said, “Let’s move.”

* * *

Dietrich was so used to his standing orders being obeyed that it took a few moments to sink in: the prisoners were all dead.

His orders were clear. If he took prisoners, he let them stew for a while, then sent in a couple of English-speaking corporals to collect names, ranks, and I.D. numbers, after which he’d ask which prisoners the corporals thought chatty. Dietrich never expected anyone to break down and offer good intelligence, but sometimes if you offered coffee and cigarettes, asking mild questions the while, the chatty ones slipped up and he gained a useful fact or two before sending them on to the coast for transport across the Med to POW camps.

But these prisoners were never going to speak.

He was so furious he had to get out. Think. Cool off. It was never a good idea to let the SS see weakness, and uncontrolled fury was weakness. You made stupid decisions when angry.

Dietrich walked out of the command tent, his mind working fast. His rank was below Schmied’s, but he was not in Schmied’s chain of command—not unless orders had come in, and Kleiner would have let him know.

This was not the first time that the SS had tried to insert people into the Kommando zbV Afrika command structure; the last time Dietrich had reported in at Division HQ he’d gotten the impression that Hitler himself was meddling with Rommel’s conduct of the war—when he could spare the attention away from Barbarossa.

Furthermore, mixing command structures almost guaranteed missed, garbled, or lost communications, and the ill will they inevitably generated when lives and materiel were lost.

Exhibit A: Typical of non-combatant officers fresh out of Berlin, Schmied had driven at top speed across the desert, without troubling himself with supplies for his men, it was apparent at first glance. He confidently assumed that Rommel’s forces would have infinite resources, as did the High Command in Germany, and had only seen fit to bring his personal supplies.

So. This oversight gave Dietrich the opening he needed in this mental chess game.  

He walked to his radio tent, and sent a message to his superior to report the arrival of Major Schmied, adding that he would need to requisition more supplies. He made certain the wording was sufficiently urgent that it would reach the eyes of Colonel Leimer, who would know how to read it.

The newcomers had been deployed to reinforce the perimeter, and those not on duty walked about here and there, their new uniforms faultless as they learned their way about the camp.

Dietrich’s men wore shirts and shorts, more than half with bare heads as they found ways to entertain themselves during the lull after two days of strenuous work; as he walked through camp toward the cook tent to fetch coffee, he recognized the strains of “Berlin bleibt doch Berlin!” on the air as the light slowly faded behind the clouds.

The air tasted of thunder. Inside one tent, its flaps still pinned apart, shadowy heads bent over a card game, weapons stacked nearby, within easy reach.

A step crunched the sand beside Dietrich, and he glanced down into Kleiner’s peeling, freckled face.

“Coffee, sir?” the corporal said, holding out a brimming tin cup.

“Thank you. I was just coming to get some.”

“Cook made it up fresh.”

Dietrich took the metal cup with its woven-mat around it to keep from burning the fingers, and considered Kleiner, who was a sober, straightforward, unimaginative young man, son of a glove-maker from a small town near Hamburg. Dietrich had once overheard him telling Oberfusilier Dorfmann that his ambition was to make Stabsgefreiter—administrative corporal. Many captains had tried to lure him from Dietrich, whose reports were invariably pointed out as exemplary at staff meetings, and who was never scolded over the radio for bureaucratic _Tohuwabohu_ , to the entertainment of the other units listening in.

“Something you wished to say, Corporal?” Dietrich asked when he realized that the man was still walking next to him, though in the sort of silence best described as fugue.

Kleiner looked sideways, then said, “The men—some of the men—thought you should hear it from me. I was there, Herr Hauptmann.” The flat tone of his voice made it clear what ‘there’ meant.

“I see. Go on, Corporal.”

“ _Na ja_. The personnel carrier with the prisoners reached the old camp right behind him. As soon as he understood that they were prisoners, he made them get out, though we’d thought they would be kept inside until we reached the rendezvous.” He looked up in question—had orders changed?

“That was what I expected,” Dietrich said to reassure him. “Go on.”

“So I went to get the papers to get names and I.D. numbers, but when I got back, he had the prisoners lined up, on their knees. This was when the storm broke. He pulled out his pistol. Then Oberleutnant Fischer told him that that you have standing orders about handling prisoners. And he—the major—said, ‘I believe the orders of a Sturmbannführer supersede those of a captain. Or are  you questioning my orders, lieutenant?’ and Fischer said he wasn’t, but the major said that in the SS questioning orders by a superior officer was punishable by death. And a lot more about how we would lose this battle if discipline was not sharpened, and then he pulled his sidearm, and shot the first prisoner in the back of his head.”

 _“Kruzitürken,”_ muttered Dietrich.

Kleiner dipped his chin as if agreement with the curse, and went on. “Then he shot the second one. He kept us at attention as he talked about the necessity for a clean, fast campaign, those were Herr Himmler’s orders, given four days ago—and then he shot the third Knabe—” Kleiner used the word for schoolboy. “—and noticed his coat covered with blood splatters, so he ordered the Sharführer to shoot the rest down with his ’40 . . .” Dietrich noticed that Kleiner used the SS equivalent of Unterfeldwebel—staff sergeant—in naming the executioner. _“ . . ._ . They all have brand new ‘40s. Then he said we should continue to pack up and move camp. We had to leave them lying there.”

“Thank you, Corporal,” Dietrich said. “That will be all.”

Kleiner braced and saluted. He said nothing more, but Dietrich did not miss the question, nearly appeal, in the younger man’s eyes.

He continued his perambulation around the camp as he sipped his coffee, listening to snatches of conversation as the light vanished. He sensed tension: heard it in the voices, saw it in the angles of arms and turned heads, the close little groups that broke up immediately if anyone approached. The memory threw him back to Frankfurt in ’38, the tight, fearful knots of people. The wary glances.

The Dietrich family had always been military—a proud legacy. But one of the earliest precepts he’d learned is that the military and the politicos must stay separate. Or you got . . .

He shuttered that trail of thought just as Kleiner reappeared to announce dinner in the command tent.

Dietrich returned to the auxiliary tent, where his orderlies had shifted his things, and for the first time in a couple of months, pulled on his undress coat. When he reached the command tent, it was to discover that among those trunks Schmied had brought an extremely expensive porcelain dinner service, the green and gold Nymphenburg pattern that Dietrich had seen twice, both times when serving as an aide-de-camp at general staff dinners, once in Berlin and once in Paris.

He did not allow his expression to change as saluted and set aside his cap. He noted that Schmied still had not removed his own, though runnels of sweat ran down behind the man’s ears into his collar.

Dietrich sat on his camp chair, inwardly laying wager how long that fine china would last before the sand scored all the gold from the porcelain.

Schmied stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, offered Dietrich one. It was too hot for smoking, and when Dietrich caught the glint of gold in Schmied’s hand, he suspected this entire cigarette charade when dinner was about to be served was to draw attention to the lighter.

Sure enough, Schmied puffed, then tossed the lighter down onto the camp table with a clatter. It appeared to be solid gold, with one of the many florid SS shields engraved into it.

Dietrich looked away as Schmied threw himself into the opposite chair then snapped his fingers at the waiting orderly, who had been waiting with a bottle of wine and a towel over his arm.

The orderly poured out two fluted crystals. Dietrich was used to such displays in Berlin; he’d discovered that the more elaborate the charade, the more the host seemed to feel he had to establish his dominant position. One of the reasons he had volunteered for the panzer division, to get away from such pomposity.

He sipped French wine as warm as soup, its bouquet fairly ruined. But he kept his opinion of that to himself, too, as Schmied said, “Captain Dietrich. I am fully aware that it is the habit among civilized men to converse on trivial matters until the covers are removed. But we are officers here to win a war, and so I believe we should proceed straight to the matters that concern us most.”

“Very well, Major,” Dietrich said.

“The night before my departure,” Schmied stated, not troubling to lower his voice—perhaps he wanted everyone beyond the tent walls to hear him—“I dined with Reichsführer Himmler. He had spent the morning with the Führer, discussing the state of the North African front. I need scarcely tell you that the High Command is not pleased at the stalling. We expected great achievements after Tobruk.”

Dietrich wondered who that ‘we’ entailed, but said nothing.

Schmied eyed him, waved impatiently for the food to be served, and after that had been done, said, “I can tell you all the latest news of Berlin, but I know this war only from reports. You have been here almost from the beginning, _ja_?”

“Since El Agheila.”

“Very nearly from the beginning, then. What is your opinion of the conduct of the war now?”

“I leave opinions to the senior staff,” Dietrich said in his mildest voice. “I believe a captain’s purpose is to follow orders.”

Schmied’s mouth widened in another of those toothy smiles with no humor in it. “An excellent attitude. I am certain that Rommel appreciates the loyalty of his division. Come, captain, drink up! This wine did not travel well in the trunk of my staff car, but surely it’s better than what you usually get, _ja_?”

“ _Ja doch_.”

“Then drink up, drink up. Orderly!” Another snap of the fingers. “Set the bottle out. We will pour for ourselves.” And as they began to eat, “So drive as fast as I could, I did not succeed in reaching you in time to witness the entirety of your mission today. Only its end. Please brief me.”

Dietrich took the time to finish a bite of the lamb that Schmied had no doubt lifted from some hapless underling in Tunis as he thought: _This man is not a soldier, he is an interrogator_. “This is a joint mission,” he said. “My orders were to blow up the airfield, then take cover at this position and wait. The Luftwaffe was to eradicate any pursuit, both ground and air, then destroy the farther two airfields. “

“I have heard no planes,” Schmied said, confirming Dietrich’s impression about Schmied’s actual war experience.

“That will remain the case until the cloud cover lifts.” Dietrich was still angry enough to give in to impulse: he went on about the mission, self-mockery alive to the fact that he was indulging his own pomposity in providing a wealth of detail about ordnance, vehicle capabilities, and so forth, couched in jargon-loaded military language borrowed heavily from von Clausewitz.

It was also a bit of a test. Schmied listened closely, proving that the man was not unintelligent, though inexperienced in the risks and potential chaos of war. From what Dietrich understood of the SS type, these men preferred situations in which they had maximum power and minimum risk.

At the end, when he knew his voice would stay even, Dietrich said, “As to the mission’s conclusion. I have standing orders concerning prisoners. I learn a great deal from them—often more than they know they are revealing, merely by using a civilized approach. No more than Field Marshal Rommel has done. Then we send them on, and I assure you, prisoners never keep us from moving fast when we need to. We all understand _Anschluss_.”

“We all have different methods,” Schmied said, without a trace of apology as he loosened his coat. “In the SS, we find that terror is a powerful incentive to speak.”

“Do you not find that they lie, saying whatever they want you to hear?”

“But such things can be checked,” Schmied said. “And publicly punished, discouraging other liars. But . . .” He lit his sixth cigarette, throwing the lighter onto the table again, then pausing for a deep drag. Schmied’s voice was disarmingly human as he added, “ . . . is it always so hot in North Africa?”

“It can get very cold, though not in this season. It’s always worst when the humidity is high. If we get a series of storms, the heat will ease for a time.” Dietrich paused as lightning flickered in the distance, brief and purple-white, followed at length by a mutter of thunder.

Schmied leaned forward to stub out the butt of his cigarette, sweat gleaming in the hollow of his collarbones visible in the loosened top button of his shirt. Damp strands of blond hair drifted on his forehead as he leaned back, wineglass in one hand, a new cigarette in the other. “Every front has its peculiarities,” he said. “And every branch of service.” His mouth twisted. “There’s a story about the old cavalry, before the Führer modernized the army. Stripped a lot of the deadwood, with their unearned privilege.” His teeth showed. “It happened not a kilometer from my hometown, in fact: some puffed up Reichsritter pranced up to the local inn, leading a troop of followers, and demanded the innkeeper take care of the horses as they stamped in and took over.”

 _White pawn advances_ , thought Dietrich, whose family had always served in the military, a fact easily checked.

“This strutting rooster of a captain and his men ordered up a huge meal, demanded it be instantly served, and drank up all the good Bock while waiting. The meal arrived, meat perfectly cooked. The troop ate well, then stamped out—of course without paying, because that was their privilege, when lo and behold, where was Herr Reichsritter’s horse?”

 _Black rook remains in second rank_. That stupid tale had been around for centuries, and if it had ever happened, the result would have been the Ritters burning down the inn, maybe the entire village. But Dietrich showed none of his reaction as Schmied gave a smug chuckle.

“The innkeeper took care of the Reichsritter’s warhorse, all right! He and his fellows had enjoyed that horse.” _Whose shoes your grandfather deferentially hammered on, you conceited lout_ , Dietrich thought, smiling gently.

“ . . . and the entire village enjoyed their laugh as the Ritters slunk out.” Schmied swallowed his wine, blinked bleary eyes. He seemed to be aware that he could not draw Dietrich. “But those were the foolish old days of Geborenen and Geforwenen, before men of brains could become officers. And look how far we have come now! All Europe on its knees before us. And soon Russia as well.”  He loosened his collar further, mopped his face with his napkin, then said, leaned forward. “So, where do we find these Rats, eh?”

“From our experience,” Dietrich said, “they will come to us.”

“ _Toll. Ausgezeichnet!”_ Schmied’s smile widened, and through a cloud of smoke, he began to talk with lip-glistening ardency about his company’s guns and their relative firepower.

* * *

The first big splats of warm rain hit the four Rats lying flat on a whitewashed stone wall, watching the German airstrip a quarter mile below. Lightning flared, sudden and so bright it leached all color from the scene. The few soldiers out began to hasten inside the hangar and to the long, low whitewashed building adjacent, which had been converted to a guardhouse. The only remaining sentry sat in the tower; the two roamers had been stashed below the wall, tied up and gagged.

Lightning and thunder struck like the crash of artillery.

Rain hammered them, as sudden as the thunder, and Troy signaled with his hand. Dressed entirely in black from head to toe, their faces smeared with black grease, the four hefted their packs and slipped down over the fence, and began low-running toward the field.

Hitch was probably the happiest. It was always fun to play around with explosives. He and Tully covered one another, legs pumping, their Thompsons thumping their backs as they worked their way around the field toward the hangar.

Moffitt and Troy moved to the landing strip, which was much riskier. Trusting to the gully washer, they crawled out and began laying their charges, falling face flat to the ground when lightning flared. They lit long fuses for each charge, knowing that the rain was likely to douse most. But all they needed was one to go off. They put them close enough to guarantee that the rest would blow in chain reaction.

Hitch and Tully eased inside the hangar, which was still stifling from the day’s heat trapped inside. A single sentry leaned precariously back in his chair, asleep. Hitch pounced, choked the man into unconsciousness, and relieved him of his weapon. Then he and Tully dragged the snoring sentry behind a stack of crates, where Tully figured he had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving what was to come.

No one else was in sight; the heavy air stank of machine oil and gasoline.

They leapfrogged past each other down the two rows of neatly parked Messerschmitts, with two Stukas at the far end. Hitch took left and Tully right, slapping Lewis bombs on landing struts, windshields (difficult to replace, and impossible to fly without), and then Hitch, finding he had a couple of bombs left, trusted to the roaring rain to slip out to the fuel dump and left them there.

Then Tully slapped his shoulder, jerked his thumb toward the far wall, and held his hands about a foot apart in a reminder of how long the fuses were: not very.

They slipped around the corner of the hangar, nearly falling on their asses from the sudden smack of hard wind and rain, bent into it and ran.

They spotted the other two at the wall just as orange light flared in the hangar window, shortly followed by a rolling explosion across the landing strip, accompanied by an aerial antiphon of lightning and thunder.

Tully and Troy boosted Moffitt and Hitch to the wall. Then the latter two leaned down to grip wrists with those below, and yank them scrambling up and over. They dropped out of sight a heartbeat before the searchlights blinked on, lighting up a million raindrops as they swept angrily back and forth.

The explosions in the downpour drowned the sound of the jeep engines as they sped away.

 

* * *

The sun had just risen, a lurid ball of sullen fire in a clear sky, when everyone in the German camp stopped what they were doing and lifted their heads as the distant drone of aircraft engines beat the air.

“Ours or theirs?” Schmied asked.

“RAF,” Dietrich said.

“How can you tell? We can’t even see them yet.”

“Engine noise,” Dietrich rapped out, and raised his voice. “Everything under cover! _SCHNELL!_ ”

Every item that had a reflective surface, no matter how small, had to be policed. As the SD auxiliaries watched, Dietrich’s men smoothly swept mugs, tins, cooking gear, weapons—even the paper wrapping from confiscated American gum—anything that might glint when seen from the air was stashed under the covered vehicles, then the men hid themselves.

“No peering upward,” Dietrich ordered. “Your faces will be visible from the sky.”

The drone grew louder, resonating through bones and teeth as wave after wave of Spitfires flew overhead in a wide reconnoitering formation.

They were black specks in the distance when a radioman bolted up, threw a salute, and held out a paper to Dietrich. Schmied made a motion as if to take it, but the radioman said stiffly, “Colonel Leimer to Captain Dietrich.”

Ah. At last. Yet when Dietrich scanned rapidly down the decoded message, disappointment gripped him. He had expected to see orders to welcome Schmied as an observer, extending every courtesy—making it clear that the SD man was not part of Dietrich’s chain of command. Instead, the orders merely directed Dietrich to report back to his base to await further instructions.

He glanced up, saw Schmied waiting, and held out the paper. Schmied’s anticipatory smile faded, and Dietrich suspected the man had been assuming he’d be placed in command, with Dietrich and his men under him.

Questions had to be going all the way up the chain to Berlin. Yet more strategic tensions between Rommel and Hitler’s staff.

By then the sound of passing engines had died away in the shimmering western haze. Dietrich looked around for his staff sergeant, and said, “We will wait half an hour. If they don’t return, break camp for the return to base.”

The staff sergeant saluted while avoiding so much as a glance at the SD detachment, and Dietrich suppressed a smile at the grizzled vet’s grasp of the situation. If Schmied was unhappy, perhaps he would commandeer the radio in order to carry Himmler’s advice to some other lucky recipient.

No chance.

“It appears that the rest of this mission has been left to the airmen,” Schmied said. “Let us go hunting rats on our way to your base.”

Dietrich hesitated. He had long since promised his men—and himself—a well earned liberty once Sergeants Troy and Moffitt, plus their drivers, were safely locked up, with an endless stretch of prison rations to look forward to. He ought to welcome the suggestion. “That is not so easy,” he began.

Schmied’s lip curled. “What is difficult about annihilating a handful of swine in little wagons? These are not even . . . officers.” He exhaled the last word on a question as the drone recommenced.

“Under cover!” Dietrich shouted, as they withdrew into the command tent.

Schmied sent an accusing look at Dietrich. “I thought the British were going on—that the Luftwaffe was to engage them over these distant airfields.”

“Situations change in war,” Dietrich said, his mind going immediately to those murdered prisoners. “They can change quite rapidly.”

The drone intensified to a roar, rattling through Schmied’s crystal water glasses on the table. This time the RAF came in an east-west approach, as low as they dared. Dietrich had chosen this ridge for his rendezvous because the terrain, though painful to navigate, didn’t show tracks, and kept the planes from skimming the sand. _They’re not looking for the other airfields. They are coming after us_.

Of course they were. What had Kleiner said—they hadn’t even buried the bodies. This was a retaliatory search-and-strike.

Dietrich could understand that. He’d seen what even a couple hours of lying in the desert could do to bodies. If he’d come across his own men covered with flies and half-pecked by vultures, he would be going after those who’d done it.

When the noise had died away enough to permit speech, he said, “This is a retaliation.”

“Tchah!” Schmied banged on the table with the flat of his hands. “The desert should be full of their corpses, to show them what is to be expected when they stand against the Reich!” He lit another cigarette, threw down the golden lighter, and scowled through his smoke. “No wonder this campaign is dragging on.”

Dietrich said, “Nevertheless, we shall have to stay put. They will assuredly make a third pass before their fuel gets low, and they need to return home before sunset. At which time we can break camp.”

Schmied had been working his tongue. “Grit!” He turned his head, wiping his free hand along his damp neck. When his fingers came away streaked with yellowish dust, he scowled. “Does the sand get into _everything?_ ”

“That has been our experience,” Dietrich said dryly.

For the next few hours, as the temperature steadily worsened, a hot breeze blew sand over officer and man alike. From under cover, Dietrich as usual had his men hard at work taking out firing locks and breeches, scouring them free of the ubiquitous sand, then oiling them. All the guns, from tanks to the men’s own weapons, had to be bore-sighted anew, then realigned with their sights. The barrels had to be scrubbed with the wire brushes. Then each gun crew stood by as Dietrich inspected, as he had for uncounted days, and would again tomorrow, because the slow, drifting tides of sand never ended.

Schmied’s men had no such orders; some observed the veterans and carried what they learned back to their own new, unused equipment. Others occupied themselves by trying unsuccessfully to stay out of heat and fitful sand-laden breezes, while Schmied roamed the confines of the command tent, smoking cigarette after cigarette, intermittently throwing himself into a chair to drink and mop his face, then he got up again.

He never removed his cap, making Dietrich suspect he was probably balding. Such vanity was amusing—but that made him no less a danger.

At length Schmied decided to examine the men’s paybooks. Dietrich flicked a glance at his senior lieutenant; this was exactly the sort of pettifoggery one expected of behind-the-lines staff maneuvering, but Dietrich knew that no anomalies would show up: no pilfering, hoarding, or other waste. They were perennially in too short supply for that.

The RAF came in for the expected third run, northeast by southwest this time—heading for home. The moment they’d vanished into the dusty horizon, Dietrich rose to give the order to pack up, but Schmied launched himself from his chair as if he’d been shot from a gun and began shouting orders, ‘ _raus, ‘raus mit Ihnen, ja doch schnell!_ Unnecessary bustle and noise—though his own men marched and snapped salutes on all sides, Dietrich’s company flowed from familiar task to familiar task with the enthusiasm of men who needed cold beer and a cold bathe, in that order.

The sun had begun its descent toward nightfall when they moved out, straight into the desert, to slant toward the ancient riverbed, which was equally exposed from the air, but slightly easier to navigate.

It was brutally hot still, the desert endless before them. Dietrich rejoiced inwardly to see Schmied head for his Daimler. Then Schmied extended a hand to Dietrich in silent invitation.

Dietrich shook his head and pointed to the big half-track truck, mounted with its 7.62 gun,  that the British for some reason had nicknamed Diana. Dietrich’s Germans called it the Schloss, or castle.

“I’ll ride up on in the castle,” he said. “I can see farther. Also, the higher you can get off the sand, which is reflecting the heat, the better.”

Schmied said nothing. He turned to where the rigidly braced orderly stood holding open the door to the black limo—but when he stuck his head halfway in, he backed out again, and climbed up to take his place beside Dietrich, squinting against the sunlight and talking about how much he looked forward to target practice on those damned jeeps—as if the Rat Patrol and the rest of the LRDG would pop up like carnival shooting gallery targets for his entertainment.

* * *

Troy and the Rats started their search from the destroyed airstrip. They thought that drawing a line from there to the abandoned camp where the British had found their dead soldiers and then in the direction of the second new RAF airstrip would provide a vector, but all they found was empty desert—no one in it but a clan of the Bedouins you often saw making their way slowly over the trackless waste, following trails only they could see.

The Rats wasted an entire day, being forced back on using the last of the extra fuel and water they’d packed onto the backs of the jeeps.

The shadows had attenuated, accenting the ripples in the sand, when they drove into the American base.

Troy jumped out and went to report their lack of success to Captain Boggs.

“Well, you aren’t the only ones to turn up nothing,” Boggs replied. “The Blighty airboys sortied all day. It’s like Dietrich vanished into thin air.”

“What about those other airstrips?”

“Shot up by the Luftwaffe, of course, from one of the forward bases. At least they came up empty, too. The airstrips had been abandoned, so all they got for their pains was a chance to blow up some prefab hangars and landing mats. They were circling around above the canopy like a bunch o’ buzzards hoping to dive to the kill, but the Spitfires were way over here, hunting Dietrich.”

Troy grunted. “Well, we aren’t giving up.” He threw off a salute and went to report to the others.

“So where do we go now?” Moffitt asked. “I don’t believe Dietrich would conveniently vanish into thin air.”

Troy had been studying their own map, grubby and much folded, with grease-pencil additions scribbled in. “Okay, going out from that camp where they dumped those kids, there are at least five places they could have holed up for a day: this abandoned town here, these old caves, the ridge along there, and these two oases, though they would’ve been driving hard to reach ‘em.”

Moffitt rubbed his chin. “It would take us a week to check all that. What do you suggest?”

“That we start from where we see him most often, when he’s not out on convoy duty, or chasing us.”

“Quite.” Moffitt’s thin smile held no humor. “Search from his base out.”

“Right. Grab a fast bite while Mitchum and his grease monkeys gas and load the jeeps. Use the last of the daylight now, and head toward their base.” He tapped the town Dietrich’s company currently occupied. “We can drive at night—we’ll see the light on the horizon to navigate by. It’s nothing but desert between here and there.”

He looked up. Hitch swallowed a sigh; he’d already set a date with a WAC traveling with the US medical detail. Tully grimaced around his toothpick. He’d wanted to supervise the mechanics, trying some tricks to goose a little more speed, after which he’d planned to relax with a beer as cold as they could get it.

But they were used to life’s little disappointments.

Troy said, “Let’s shake it.”

 * * *

 Schmied started in on his private stash of wine as soon as they camped for the night. He maintained a semblance of civility in inviting Dietrich to join him.

Dietrich did—one glass, to which he drank two of the stale, metallic water. It was either force down the water, stale as it was, or waken with a skull-splitting headache.

It wasn’t entirely a private wish for vengeance that kept him silent about dry air, wine, and dehydration. It was mostly circumspection; after a tedious and tense day, Dietrich had discovered that Schmied considered even simple corrections of facts as a move in his mental chess game. Command was competition to Major Schmied—and when at last he relaxed onto his camp bed, hands crossed behind his head, Dietrich wondered if part of Berlin’s motivation in sending the man to North Africa was to get rid of him. Except that he seemed to be one of Himmler's pets.

Before he dropped into sleep, as wind thudded softly against the canvas of his tent, Dietrich made a note to radio Leimer again. Let someone higher up deal with Schmied.

Tent walls do nothing to block noise. Dietrich woke to the sound of Schmied retching from what had to be a hellish hangover. Dietrich’s spurt of sympathy turned to reluctant respect when he saw the major step out in the predawn light to face his men lined up in the sand, ready to begin calisthenics, but appreciation ended abruptly when Schmied chivvied Dietrich's own men out to join behind the SD lines, without giving Dietrich time to explain that his men got in their physical training at base. They wouldn’t lose their aim or edge in a couple days away from the training ground.

But Schmied was clearly determined to demonstrate his superior rank in every way he could.

Very well, then. Dietrich was annoyed enough to make his own countermoves, and silently joined alongside his men. He knew what Schmied was feeling like, and at half a head taller and a good deal broader, he suspected that he was going to leave the man in the dust.

So it proved.

The SD soldiers had begun their calisthenics like robot-men, sending no few disparaging glances back at Dietrich’s company, whose precision appeared lackadaisical because they had learnt the hard way not to get into a full sweat at the start of a long day in the desert, with only their increasingly stale, overly warm water to quench their thirst. The SD company’s collective superiority faded when they became aware of Dietrich’s easy one-handed pushups, and his perfect shots, right hand against left. Schmied winced at every shot he took, so it was no wonder his aim was spoiled.

Though a good part of his impulse was to bolster his men, Dietrich regretted his demonstration as soon as they broke to eat breakfast. It didn’t take any genius to see how Schmied felt, as he tried to force down the dried meat and confiscated powdered eggs of their IM rations—because by then, of course, all the major’s private store of food had spoiled beyond saving.

Dietrich ate quickly, then stopped by his lead driver to discuss the route. By the time he was done talking, the last items were being packed into the trucks.

It was obvious that the men had divided into two distinct units, unspoken rivalry nearly outright antagonism—their attitude reflecting that of the SD major. The prospective journey in what would be another day of brutal heat under a thick, flat cloud cover could have been made less arduous by conversations between men who had been away from home for so long and newcomers eager for tips on survival. But Schmied’s attitude was shared by his men, who regarded themselves as superior. Resentment was as palpable as the heat.

Dietrich leaped up to his place on the Schloss, followed by Schmied, who jerked his fist twice in the air, signaling for the column to proceed.

All morning, the major rode in grim silence. Dietrich watched the horizon through his binoculars, grateful that the only sounds were the growling engines and the clatter of tracks.

It was about noon when Dietrich spotted the pair of Bedouin waiting motionless on a dune, and hand-signaled to bring the column to a halt.

“Why stop?” Schmied brought up his binoculars.

Dietrich said, “That is Hassan, my chief Bedouin spy,” he said.

Schmied lowered his binoculars, his mouth a crimp of pain and ill-temper as he watched Dietrich reached into the canvas bag he carried with him on these journeys, and brought out a pouch that clinked with the distinctively rich sound of Dutch guilder. “Money?” Schmied exclaimed. “What use have you out here for money?”

“I pay Hassan for intelligence,” Dietrich said.

Schmied’s face lengthened in disgust. “These inferior races should be grateful we do not exterminate them. _Paying_ them? It is a terrible precedent—makes us look weak.”

Dietrich glanced briefly at him. “This is what I am certain of: they know ways to move about that we do not.” He indicated the dune the figures sat on, a couple kilometers distant—out of range of their guns. “And Hassan has not given me false intelligence yet. It was he who first identified the airfields being built. Our spotter planes cannot cover every kilometer of desert.” He turned to signal for the staff car to be brought forward.

“You are going _to_ them?” Schmied asked, even more incredulous. “An officer of the Reich _always_ summons underlings to him.”

“They won’t come. They like to meet on middle ground.”

“Middle ground,” Schmied repeated, slewing around to gesture at the empty horizon, his voice rising. “Between us and what?”

“They have an oasis not far from here, which they use as a way station. It has little water—not worth establishing an outpost there and then having to guard it. So we leave it alone, and in return gain good intelligence on enemy movements.”

“Stinking, greasy Arabs,” Schmied sneered. “They need to be taught who is master.”

Dietrich was not going to point out that in the deep desert, the Bedouin were masters, in spite of European heavy weapons and vehicles—which as often as not broke down no matter how vigilant their owners. If the enemy didn’t get you, the sun did. Schmied would either learn or return to Berlin via medical transport.

Dietrich thrust the pouch into his pocket and made sure his pistol was loose in the holster as he said, “I suggest you use this chance for a water break while I’m gone. My interview should only take a few minutes.”

He did not wait for an answer, but jumped down to the sand.

His staff car drove up, he climbed in, and the staff car sped across the sand toward the spot where the two figures had disappeared on the other side of the dune.

* * *

The Rats had camped in sight of the German base, and headed southward before first light.

There was just enough wind to stir sand haze, which limited visibility. On an ideal day, the air was so still you could see the dust of a moving German column for miles.

They slowed to a wary crawl, halting outside a small oasis that they knew was frequented by a tribe of Bedouin that had made itself wealthy by selling information to both sides. They knew the Germans occasionally halted there for water and information.

Troy and Moffitt left Hitch and Tully on guard as they crept up the slope of a dune, moving much like Bedouins themselves. They settled side by side in the sand and peered down at the oasis through their binoculars. It was located in a cup valley stippled with a cluster of palm and other hardy plants, and surrounded by semi-permanent buildings and colorful tents.

“Yes,” Moffitt murmured. “That’s Hassan and Malik’s tribe.”

Troy peered down at the men in their robes, cleaning and loading rifles, talking and checking camels, as women went to and fro carrying buckets of water, hanging out washing, and cooking over fires that sent thin columns of smoke up to dissipate in the heat. Children and goats chased around them all, unheeded. All these locals looked alike to Troy, but he trusted Moffitt to discern friend from foe. “Looks like those men are going to war. Against us?”

“The last I heard, it was a rival tribe,” Moffitt murmured. “Hassan and his brother have been throwing their weight around rather like your gangster kingpins, using British and German gold, and Yankee cigarettes. Rumor has it Hassan has royal designs. He wants to become the local sheik.”

Troy muttered in disgust, “Why do our people trust ‘em?”

“Because the information is always good.” Moffitt sent him an ironic smile before pressing his eyes back to the binoculars. “There’s an old Bedouin saying I can translate best as ‘My brother and I fight my cousin, and my cousin and I fight the stranger.’ They probably think the more information they give the Germans about us, and us about the Germans, the sooner we wipe each other out and leave them to their dunes. Right now Hassan likes the Germans better because he gets guns from them. You Yanks, so far, have only been handing out money and cigarettes.”

Troy grunted. “Think they spotted us?” And when Moffitt didn’t answer, “Hey. Something’s happening.”

A newcomer arrived on horseback from the other direction, in a pall of dust. The men gathered around then began gesticulating. Two men separated off, mounted camels, and began riding together back in the direction the horseman had come.

“That’s Malik and Hassan,” Moffitt murmured. “Off to meet someone.”

“What you want to bet it’s the Krauts,” Troy said. “Heading for home base. Let’s follow. See if we can save ourselves a search.”

Moffitt wriggled backward, and the two slid down the dune and ran to the jeeps to jump in. Tully and Hitch didn’t waste gas by roaring out; they drove in low gear at just over camel pace, staying well back and stopping frequently so that Moffitt could orient on the two Bedouin when they vanished over the tops of dunes. It was an exasperating trip, made more so by the sun climbing toward noon.

When the sun reached its height, the Bedouin brothers halted their camels atop a particularly high dune. The Rats stayed well back, keeping low. The Bedouin brothers gazed southward.

Troy said, “Let’s split up. Come around on either side. I want to know what those two are waiting for. If it’s Bedouin, we go on.”

Half an hour of careful navigation later, they spotted the last thing they expected to see—Captain Dietrich, alone except for a driver.

Troy signaled by gunning the engine.

The Rats converged from both sides, sand flying.

Dietrich, who had been thinking ahead about his next radio message to Colonel Leimer, let out a curse as the familiar jeep roar seemed to come out of nowhere from both sides.

Up on the dune, the Bedouin brothers saw the American jeeps close in on the German. They exchanged a look—the same Americans they had been about to report sneaking around had just shown up.

Fifty guilders vanished like smoke. They remounted their camels and rode back toward the oasis, as below, Dietrich pulled his pistol and began firing at the cloud of dust roaring around him. He knew it was futile—he couldn’t see anything to hit—but he kept trying until the clip emptied.

Then his driver gave a yelp and slumped over the steering wheel, clutching his shoulder with one hand and driving erratically with the other. A hard jolt over a hidden rock, and he fainted. The staff car’s clutch disengaged, the engine sputtered.

Dietrich leaped out and began running.  He made it about ten steps before Troy brought him down in a flying tackle.

* * *

Troy had mixed it up with Dietrich before, and knew the man fought like he was made of whipcord and steel. It didn’t help that Dietrich was bigger than any of them.

Pain sent stars across Troy’s vision as a fist connected with his jaw, followed by a pile-driver punch to his gut. He fell, but in falling, scissored his legs hard on Dietrich’s boot—and the German toppled. Troy heaved himself up and more pain shot up his arm as his haymaker met a jaw like granite.

Then the 50 cal stuttered, and Dietrich froze.

Tully had leaped to the back of the jeep, fired a off an overhead warning, and now had the gun pointed straight at him.

Troy took the opportunity to land on Dietrich, flattening him face down into the sand. He dragged the German’s wrists behind him, then sent an exasperated look up at Tully, whose left hand ripped his belt out of his saggy trousers and tossed it down, his right hand never moving from the machine gun trigger.

In the staff car, the driver had roused, but he, too, froze in the act of reaching for the shotgun in its holder when the second jeep skidded right up, sand flying, and Moffitt at his 50 cal swaying into the skid, pale eyes cold above the gun unerringly trained.

The driver fell back, clutching his shoulder.

Troy finished securing Dietrich’s hands, then knelt down, gasping for breath and spitting out the sand he’d inhaled. His gut throbbed.

Tully sneezed three times, then wiped his nose on the sleeve of the jacket he wore over his shirtless body. His trousers sagged even more as he got to his feet. He absently hitched them up, then bent to help Troy pull the German driver upright.

Dietrich sneezed as well, sweat-spangled hair flopping in his eyes. He blinked sand-coated eyelashes, then squinted up at Troy. “I have a column of my men, plus another detachment, not two kilometers away. They will be looking for me immediately.”

“Yeah,” Troy said. “That’s what I figured." He lifted his head. “Let’s move it.”

He motioned Tully over. “You secure that Kraut driver—keep him away from Dietrich—and take the staff car round behind us. Moffitt, you lead. I’ll follow in your tracks. Tully, I want the only set of treads visible to be from that staff car.”

A short time later, the two jeeps and the staff car wound their way down toward what once had been a river bed, the oasis being the last remains of a significant water way in ancient times.

There, on a long flat bed of sandstone where no tracks would be visible, they called a halt, and Tully silently did a rough and ready job of binding up the German driver’s shoulder. Then he was transferred to Moffitt’s jeep, and the staff car was abandoned.

The Rats drove down the ancient river bed until a rocky ridge like the bony shoulder of a massive dragon curved away and the rocky flooring sank beneath the sand, victim of some tectonic disaster millennia previous.

Troy called a halt so they could clear the sand out of their gullets. The taste of warm, stale canteen water was too familiar to all six of them to be noted with anything but gratitude, each getting two swallows, first the Rats and then the two prisoners.

When Troy leaned over to chuck the empty canteen in the back of the jeep, he glanced up at Moffitt standing on the back end of his jeep, gun trained steadily on Dietrich. He said to the German captain, voice grating, “You shot those Brit kids and left ‘em to rot.”

 _“Nein!”_ A spasm of disgust tightened Dietrich’s face. He exclaimed in English, “That was not my order.”

“Whose was it?” Troy asked.

Dietrich gazed straight ahead, half his mouth pressed in a grim line, the other half swelling up into a bruise that reflected the imprint of Troy’s knuckles.

Troy exchanged another look with Moffitt. His gambit to take Dietrich by surprise had worked. That first reaction had been too fast, too instinctive, to be fake. But other than that, he was all out of ideas—he had never been good at interrogation.

Moffitt cocked a hip and leaned his wrists on the handles of his fifty-caliber machine gun as he drawled, “Then it seems a terrible shame that the RAF has direct orders to obliterate you and your entire company. The only reason they aren’t overhead right now is this damn storm blowing in.”

Dietrich lifted his gaze. “You are telling me this no doubt for a reason, Sergeant Moffitt?”

Moffitt lifted one shoulder. “I am interested in justice.”

Dietrich’s voice deepened, betraying a note of dry humor. “This is the first I have heard of your interest in justice for Germans.”

Moffitt’s light voice retorted dispassionately, “I am interested in justice for those boys from the aerodrome. Most of whom were not even armed. They were a work detail—”

A concussion smacked the air, followed by several others in quick succession. All heads turned, recognizing artillery fire: the crump of tank artillery, followed by the deeper boom of the seven and a half centimeter gun on the Schloss.

It was Moffitt, veteran of the desert ways before the war, who first homed in on the direction. “The oasis,” he exclaimed. "Somebody blew up the bloody oasis."

“Herr Hauptman,” the driver said hoarsely. _“Was ist denn los?”_

 _“Schwieg tot,”_ Dietrich murmured.

Smoke gouted upward from beyond the dunes, orange flaring briefly.

Troy shifted his gaze from the smoke roiling up to brush the undersides of the heavy clouds to Dietrich, then said, “Let’s move it.”

They took off, the sky darkening rapidly to a lurid greenish light that dwarfed the artillery smoke, dramatic as it was. Lightning flickered on the horizon.

They’d driven maybe half a kilometer when a metallic-smelling breeze began to kick up. Dietrich turned his head. “Sergeant Troy.”

Troy hauled up short, Hitch pulling alongside, his glasses reflecting branch lightning. After the thunder rumbled across the sky, Dietrich said, “I will make an offer.”

“Go ahead.”

“I have two conditions. Let me listen on your radio. Not even broadcast. If I . . . hear what I suspect I will be hearing, I will tell you everything. My second condition is, I will not do anything that jeopardizes my men more than they are at this moment.”

Troy had participated in enough raids and after-action reports via radio to figure that what Dietrich wanted to hear was the after-action report by whoever had attacked the Bedouin oasis. Well, he wanted to know, too.

He turned to the others, to meet an inquiring glance from Moffitt, his expressive brows lifted. Hitch fiddled with his goggles and hat. Tully shifted his toothpick from one side then back again. Yeah. Nobody was liking this situation.

Troy wiped his sleeve across his face, then brought his head down in a nod. “Hitch. Radio.” And to Dietrich, “We’ll keep you tied up.”

Dietrich made no response to that, but murmured the radio frequency. Hitch cranked the speaker, and they listened in silence to the squeal and burble until he tuned into a crackling station with a German voice speaking distinctly in code.

* * *

Dietrich shut out the pain in his arms, the intense heat, the threatening storm, his own stupidity in waltzing straight into a trap. He could berate himself later—when Leimer was through with him.

There were worse things. And as the flat German voice carefully read out the coded words—a code he had mostly memorized by now—he comprehended enough to know that the outcome he feared most was happening, and here he was, utterly unable to do anything about it.

Dietrich turned to Sergeant Troy. “According to the report, my company, along with that of Sturmbannführer Schmied, newly arrived from the SD in Tunis, were attacked in force by an alliance of Americans and British, who had armed Bedouins.”

“What?” Troy barked.

“Schmied reports a successful defense,” Dietrich said dryly, “the only loss being myself. He is requesting to be placed in command of my company, so that he may prosecute the war to the glory of the Reich.”

Sergeant Moffitt said, “I thought your commander in chief did not want the SD—or the SS—here in Africa.”

“That is correct.” _It has not stopped Berlin from trying to insert them._

“What precisely did the report say?”

“That they followed the tracks made by my staff car to a river flat, where they discovered I had been abducted by Bedouin. My blood was all over the car, proving that I was dead.”

“Wait, how could he have come to that conclusion?” Troy asked. “First of all, those tracks they followed were your car, but there were no camel tracks around. The Bedouin don’t drive cars any more than they fly. So how could they put you with the Bedouin?”

“Also. Blood was in the front, where the driver sat,” Tully put in laconically. “Not in back where you were.”

“Did the driver get mentioned?” Troy asked, as the driver held his lacerated shoulder, looking uncomprehendingly from one to another. 

Private Hitchcock tipped an eye skyward. “Looks to me we’re in for a downpour, so we may’s well empty the canteens.”

 He opened a new one, and gave some to the driver, who looked feverish, as Dietrich said, “There was no mention of him. I cannot translate every coded word, but I understood enough. Schmied twisted the circumstances to give him what he wanted: a chance to attack someone to prove his might, and to take command of my company. If I do turn up, and he can contrive it, no doubt he will be able to produce my body for a suitably heroic funeral.”

Silence fell, as thunder crashed in the distance.

Sergeant Moffitt leaned on the machine gun. “Meanwhile, the moment this storm passes, the RAF will be up in the air. Your company will stand out like a beacon, and they will be bombed into atoms.”

Dietrich gazed northward. Yes, this was why he'd spoken.

Troy said, “What’s Schmied’s objective? Besides highjacking your command.”

“You, as it happens.”

Moffitt leaped down from the back of his jeep and lounged over, thin, wiry, deceptively relaxed except for that pale-eyed, mad stare. “What’s your objective here?”

“To save my men,” Dietrich stated. “Without me there to intervene, they are obliged to follow his orders.”

Sergeant Troy scowled, then said, “Tully, keep an eye on these two.”

Private Pettigrew hoisted himself to the back of the other jeep, and leaned on the machine gun handles, helmet shading his eyes, his jacket open over his tanned torso as he shifted the ubiquitous toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. The complete lack of discipline allowed him and his fellow private astonished the Germans—yet no one argued with his prowess as a driver, or his sharpshooting.

Dietrich shifted his attention away, considering how much cooperation he’d gained from his enemies, while the officer on his own side plotted against him.

 * * *

The three Rats crunched through the sand a few yards away, and stood in a circle.

Troy gritted his teeth and turned to Moffitt. “You saw that oasis. Women, kids, goats, camels. Yeah, a few men, but all they had were those ancient single shot rifles. There’s no way they went after that convoy. No way.”

Moffitt murmured, “This SD major might not be conveniently mad, but he seems to be determined.”

Hitch crossed his arms. “Sarge, I’m not so sure I want to save a bunch of Krauts. Seems to me that’s what Dietrich is asking. Who’s to say this isn’t another scheme? Remember when he faked us out and took our places, nearly blowing up the ammo dump at HQ?”

“This is different.” Troy grunted. “We can’t prove Dietrich didn’t order those kids shot, we can only say he’s never done anything like it before. But we do know that Schmied ordered the Krauts to blow up that oasis, because Dietrich was with us. One mass murder might be arguable. Twice? That’s no accident.”

Hitch nodded reluctantly. “So what d’you have in mind, Sarge?”

“Here’s what I’m thinking. First of all, if Dietrich is telling the truth, then they’re talking about us all the way in Berlin. That means we gotta be hurting their supply lines.”

“As they are hurting ours,” Moffitt murmured.

“That’s why we Yanks are bringing over a lot more,” Troy said. “The Krauts aren’t getting that support anymore. Not with Hitler going after Russia. But that’s the brass’s problem. Right now, it sounds like we got some moxie, so I say, yeah, let’s bait a trap.”

“With what?” Hitch asked, looking skeptical.

“With us.”

 “Let me get this straight. We’re gonna risk _our_ lives, to help a _Kraut?_ ” Hitch pushed back his cap, looking horrified.

“No, we’re gonna risk our lives to keep this SS weasel from getting a foothold here.”

“He’s right,” Moffitt said.

“Well, I guess that makes sense.” Hitch shrugged. “So what now?”

Troy began to speak, but Moffitt raised his hand. They looked around as big drops of rain began to hit faces and caps and clothes, spatting onto the sand.

“I believe there is an old goatherder’s hut not far,” Moffitt said.  “We can wait out the storm.”

“Let’s shake it.”

Lightning branched overhead, thunder shattering the air before the skies opened. Rain drenched the six men in seconds as the jeeps bucketed over sand flattening under the drumming rain. Right now the wet sand was the consistency of wet cement, but if the storm lasted hours, the sand would swiftly turn into a quagmire.

Moffitt’s memory proved to be good. The hut was nothing more than a small stone shell of a building, walls on three sides and open to the sky, but the Rats had holed up in far worse shelters. They wrestled a canvas cover over the tops of the walls, and weighted it down with stones. They parked one of the jeeps directly across the front to cut the wind, and crowded into the small space.

Once that was done, Troy pulled Hitch into the second jeep, which they had stretched a canopy over to protect the radio. Trusting to the noise of the rain all around them, and the intermittent thunder, Troy said, “Get on the horn. Raise Captain Boggs. Ask him to radio the Tommies. Ground the flyboys, and get a mobile patrol out to the remains of Nafurat Naqia. Pack as much firepower as they can haul.”

“Nafurat—hey, we’ve camped there a couple times, right? Village bombed to bits by the Italians?”

“Right. The Brits know it’s there, Dietrich’s Germans know it’s there. Schmied doesn’t. We’re going to lead him right to it. But tell Boggs it’s gotta look empty when we race in to make our desperate last stand.”

Hitch grinned. “Roger.”

Troy reached behind him into the jeep, dug out an armful of K-rations, and eased out from under the flap. Rain bounced off his hat. Bending down, he ducked into the hut, which smelled like goat and fresh sweat.

He’d been in worse.

“Chow time,” he said, setting the ration boxes down on the churned-up sand. “Looks like one breakfast and two suppers. Who wants what?”

* * *

Dietrich had chosen to sit in the corner where two walls met. He leaned his shoulders lightly against the stone. It was uncomfortable—anything would be uncomfortable—but at least with his back to a corner, he had a bit more room to work at the belt binding his wrists.

Sergeant Troy had ducked out, Dietrich assumed to issue orders to Private Hitchcock. At a guess, the private would remain as sentry outside, with the radio. As Dietrich patiently worked his wrists against the worn leather a millimeter at a time in order to get his thumb near the edge of the belt where it was worked into the buckle, he thought about ways to get at that radio.

“Tully, why don’t you take care of Fritz here.” Troy held out half the biscuits in one of the K-rat containers, and the tin of potted meat as he indicated the driver, who by now was flushed with fever, his gaze diffuse.

“Right, Sarge.”

“Moffitt, want to do the honors?” Troy’s thumb jerked at Dietrich.

“I believe I’ll pass,” Moffitt said, sitting back against the far wall. He laid his Thompson across his knees.

“Then you get the breakfast.”

Troy handed Moffitt one of the containers, which Moffitt regarded with a crimped upper lip. “Nobody can stomach these.”

“It smells less objectionable than Alte Mann,” Dietrich murmured.

Moffitt’s pale gaze lifted. “Yes,” he drawled. “I’ve seen those Italian rations your chaps are provided. I think someone in the Italian hierarchy is making an oblique statement about the alliance.”

“Except that the Italian soldiers must eat them as well,” Dietrich said. He didn't add that the Italian officers had managed to secure separate, and far more luxurious, supplies, as due to men of birth and rank.

Troy cracked one of the stale biscuits, leaned over, and held it out to Dietrich, who lipped it in. The biscuit was somewhat less tasteless than the AM rations, but not by much. Also, more difficult to chew in a dry mouth.

But the Americans were eating them as well, and with the same expressions of grim concentration that Dietrich suspected he wore. Awkward as it was to be fed, Dietrich made no demur—if Troy did untie him so he could eat, he would lose the little progress he’d made on loosening the belt.

Dietrich’s guess about Private Hitchcock was confirmed when the latter stuck his head into the hut, held out canteens brimming with fresh rainwater, then said, “All’s okay, sarge.” His tone was too studied for a man merely reporting that he had refilled the canteens.

Troy glanced up. “Right, Hitch. Thanks,” in an absent addendum as he took the canteens.

Everyone got half a canteen full of water too fresh to taste like metal. That was more physical relief than the over-salted, metallic-tasting food, which Sergeant Troy had divided scrupulously in half. Dietrich endured the unsettling sense of intimacy in being unable to eat on his own. Troy was matter-of-fact, his hands as grimy as the rest of him—as they all were—and callused from sun, wind, and rough living. Dietrich noted that Troy avoided his gaze, his attitude reminding him of men at the latrine, each pretending an invisible wall around himself where none existed, in order to make enforced proximity tolerable.

He had not expected to find similar usage from enemies. He reflected that such behavior implied an underlying decency. As if, had they encountered one another, say, in Paris, during the mid-thirties, when they were all barely out of school, they might have fallen into easy conversation—even friendship. Or if Troy had come to the old Germany on a tour, they might have gone together to the local Stube to talk over their respective training schools, commanders' peccadillos, flirted with the local girls. _Und so weiter_.

When they had all grimly swallowed down the last of the wretched food, Troy unconsciously underscored Dietrich’s private musings by obligingly lighting one of the four cigarettes that had come in the ration container, and held it so that Dietrich could take it in his lips before he lit one for himself. Again, the contrast with Schmied’s fevered smoking, his noisy clatter with his golden lighter, struck Dietrich.

As he worked the cigarette to the side of his mouth so the hot ash would not fall on the bare skin where his shirt was open, he reflected on the nature of truce, and its unspoken as well as spoken components.

There was no personal animus here, that is, not much beyond the obvious wariness before an enemy whose duty was clear. In binding Dietrich, Troy had even checked to make sure the leather was secure, but not cutting off circulation.

Dietrich kept working at the belt, and at last got his thumb against the edge of the strap. He pushed it toward the buckle, then tested it: yes, the hump between the two metal bars of the belt had bunched up slightly. Not nearly enough to wedge a finger under—

Dietrich raised his gaze, to catch Troy regarding him. Had he given himself away?

“Is the belt too tight?” Troy asked. “Want me to make sure?”

Dietrich said, “I’ll live. You might tap the ash off this cigarette, though.”

As a distraction, it worked for a moment. But when Troy held the cigarette out again, Troy glanced at the driver as if their bonds were still on his mind.

To distract him, Dietrich said, “Engel.”

Troy glanced up. “What?”

“Not Fritz. His name is Engel. Wolfgang Engel. He was a taxi driver in Linz before he was conscripted.”

Sergeant Troy sat back, knees up, hands resting loosely on them. He was trim, compact, even. Dietrich remembered being amused to find him shorter than Dietrich had expected once they finally met up. But Troy was no weakling. He was all lean muscle. Americans had been generally derided as huge, fat, and stupid—much, Dietrich had learned while abroad, the way the world regarded Germans.

Troy cocked his head, his eyes shadowed under that marauder’s hat. “What were you before the war, Captain?”

“A student at the military school.”

The head cocked the other way. “So you were gung ho Hitler?”

 _Not at all_. Long years of being circumspect kept Dietrich quiet. “I was a schoolboy. And I’d been raised—a long family tradition, you understand—to regard ourselves as separate from politics. And you, sergeant?”

“Took over from my dad. Which I expect I’ll go back to, once this mess is over. You’ll still be marching and saluting, eh?” Troy didn’t wait for an answer, but turned his head. “Tully?”

The private, like poor Engel, did not smoke. He began gathering up the empty K-ration containers as he said in his slow, distinctly American drawl, “I expect I’ll go right back to tasting what we make in our still. And hunting muskrat for fun.”

Troy looked at Sergeant Moffitt, whose lip curled. His tone was acerbic instead of reminiscent as he drawled, “I’ll probably be right here, sifting the ruins for the remains of wars two thousand years ago.”

Sergeant Moffitt’s mannerisms reminded Dietrich of rumors concerning David Stirling, another mad, aristocratic Scot, and wondered what Moffitt would say if he discovered that Dietrich’s company called him the Berserker. Troy was the Cowboy.

As thunder roared overhead, and Troy tipped his head back to study the canvas roof drooping with rain, Dietrich shifted minutely to take the strain off his shoulders, and pressed his finger against the belt strap again.

He had two goals: to get free, and to get to the radio. Between these, he expected a fight. The Rats had weapons, but their pistols were holstered. Moffitt held a machine gun. So he’d be Dietrich’s first target: whoever held the Thompson would hold the balance of power.

He turned his gaze to discover Moffitt watching him with that mad, austere glare.

Moffitt said, “So you condone what Hitler’s done to the Jews?”

Wherefrom came that? “Assigning them to work camps?” Dietrich asked. “With the Poles? That was a political decision. We’re told when the war ends, and the need for heightened production ceases, that they will be released again, and life will return to normal.”

“Normal?” Moffitt repeated. “Have you read what Hitler says about them? He calls for total extermination.”

“That’s all political rhetoric,” Dietrich said, though he knew it was the easy answer—the glib one. But he was not going to admit to the enemy his own private doubts, which he shared with no one but his cousins.

Cousin, now.

He said, “My grandfather told us boys once that the Reich will survive bad kings. And bad chancellors. They don’t live forever.”

Moffitt stirred, anger flushing along his cheeks, but Troy held up a hand. “Look. We’re not going to solve the Hitler question right now. I vote we leave him to Roosevelt and Churchill.”

“Very well,” Moffitt drawled. “Anyway, it seems that any questions about the truth of those work camps should rightly be put to the SS. Isn’t that their bailiwick?”

“Security and protection, yes,” Dietrich said.

“Protection,” Moffitt repeated with hauteur. “How many of them are like that madman who abducted the Red Cross workers a while back? Nearly shot me. You were there, Captain Dietrich.”

Troy flashed his cowboy grin. “We had a bet going about that. We still owe a case of champagne to whoever took out the SOB. That was one excellent shot.”

Dietrich said nothing, and watched Moffitt level a warning glance at Troy.

No, the Rats were far from stupid.

“What gets me, sometimes,” Troy said in a reminiscent tone. “Here we are, both sides fighting over worthless real estate that none of us can live on. Wouldn’t, by choice. But here we are anyway. You done with that cigarette, captain? Looks like it’s down to embers.”

Troy leaned out and plucked the butt from Dietrich’s lips, then flicked it through the flap into the rain, which had abruptly diminished to drips and splats, as the desert storms so often did. “We’ve got a little light left. Time to talk turkey.”

Then he took Dietrich utterly by surprise—his mind obviously running in parallel. “Captain. How about faking a message to your buddies?”

* * *

Troy watched the German captain, whose inscrutable expression tightened to wariness. Troy didn’t blame Dietrich. The man had to be coming to terms with the fact that he was about to get an all-expenses-paid vacation to a POW camp in North America. Fact is, Troy had expected more trouble with him over the food—acting the German officer, refusing to eat rather than be fed like some damn big baby. He knew _he_ would have hated it. So he’d tried to keep his distance, yet be fair.

And now it came to the real brass tacks: his plan. It wasn’t going to work if Dietrich didn’t cooperate.

“Would you repeat that, please, Sergeant?” Dietrich asked.

“Yeah.” Troy leaned forward, and tried to keep his voice easy. “You send a fake message over the radio. Moffitt will supervise, of course—you know he speaks German. My idea is, you pretend to be your command HQ, and order your guys back to your base. Would your radioman play along?”

“What is it you have in mind?” Dietrich asked.

“This is my idea. Two of us are gonna head out as bait. I figure it’ll take about an hour to reach your guys, if they were locked down tight during this storm.”

Dietrich gave a considering nod. “Yes. Or the trucks would have bogged in the wash.”

“Right. So, say, in an hour, you make that call. We show up near your guys, make a lot of noise. Get Schmied to give chase. He’ll want to nail us himself, right? So he’s more likely to send your guys back to base so he and his boys can hog the kill, especially if he gets an order to return to base at the same time.”

Dietrich’s gaze lifted, then he slowly brought his head down in a nod. “I think you very well might be right. He would want the credit, I am very sure of that.”

“Okay, then. So we get him to chase us. Your guys go back to base. We’re square.”

Troy watched Dietrich's expression tighten into his familiar inscrutability as he regarded Troy from under lowered brows, his dark eyes narrowed. Despite the sand still clinging to the creases in his neck, and glistening in the open gap of his shirt, the sweat-tangled hair on his brow, he still managed to look very much the German commander. Maybe it was his size. The curve of muscle swelling the sleeves of that grimy shirt. Then he said, “I am to take it you have arranged a trap for Major Schmied.”

Troy let out a sharp sigh. “Look. This is the only way to meet your conditions, and keep your guys out of it. Take it or leave it.”

“I will take it.”

Troy nodded, trying to hide his considerable relief. The plan was crazy enough, contingent on a lot of stuff he couldn’t control: Dietrich’s assessment of this Schmied; finding the Krauts; the Brits being willing to scramble and fall in with a crazy plan. Actually, Troy counted on the latter more than he did anything else. They had to be too hot for justice to nix it.

He swung to his feet and rapped on Tully’s helmet, _clank! Clank!_ “Let’s shake it.”

For a few minutes the Rats were busy. First they had to get the prisoners into the radio jeep. Troy noticed that Dietrich stuck close to the wounded guy, who leaned hard on Tully, both under the gun held by Moffitt.

Hitch filled Troy’s jeep with gas from the jerry-can, and shifted out most of the gear except for the ammo. He took most of Moffitt’s ammo, some water, and kept an extra jerry-can of gas, as well as an extra Thompson. That was all—everything else either got thrown into the second jeep, or dumped. Troy and Hitch had to travel fast and light.

When all was ready, Troy caught Moffitt’s gaze. “One hour.”

Moffitt jerked his chin up. “An hour.”

The sun was vanishing rapidly in the ragged departing clouds when Troy and Hitch raced into the desert. The stars began to appear, and they had to turn on their headlights.

Forty minutes into their drive, Hitch abruptly hit the lights and downshifted. “Felt the Germans' vibration in the sand,” he said low-voiced.

Troy nodded, and motioned for Hitch to pull up. Troy walked up a dune, noting the hard-packed sand, still wet. By morning it would be dry again, stirring in the wind. They’d be able to move fast as long as they stayed out of the troughs between dunes, which were still mushy.

He dropped to his knees, and peered over the crest of a sandbank. He spotted the lights of the moving convoy, watched long enough to gauge direction, then returned to the jeep.

“About four miles that way,” he said.

They drove in the dark, slow, and then slower, so their noise wouldn’t be heard over the roar, rumble, and clatter of the German vehicles.

Troy counted them. Both companies were there. Hitch turned the jeep and drove parallel, still in the dark. Fifty minutes.

Fifty-five minutes.

Fifty-eight minutes.

An hour.

And hour one. Two. Three . . .

Troy was trying not to imagine everything that could have gone wrong when headlights flashed from the back, and a staff car put on a burst of speed and pulled alongside the big tracked truck that Dietrich always rode in. No one was there.

The convoy growled to a halt. Troy stood in the jeep, and raised his binoculars.

The distant vehicles, the dark yellow bleached pale by the headlights, leaped into detail. Three back was a long, low limousine. As Troy watched, a figure got out, the headlights runneling down his black leather greatcoat in an oily gleam.

Two Germans spoke, and the officer looked about him, then gesticulated angrily.

Troy said, “That’s our cue.”

Hitch flicked on the lights as Troy leaped up onto the back, braced himself, and opened fire.

Hitch bumped and jolted across the sand, and Troy raked the German tanks with bullets; he remembered his promise and shot over the heads of the three figures scrambling apart from one another, and diving into their vehicles. “That’s your warning,” Troy said to himself as Hitch spun the wheel and came around for another run.

Machine guns at the rear of the column came to life, bullets stitching across the sand toward the jeep. Hitch hit the lights and swerved as Troy kept up the constant fire.

 * * *

The radio operator, Private Metzger, had had to repeat the orders three times to Major Schmied, who stared around cursing and issuing conflicting orders.

That was before the shooting started. “What is that?” the major shrieked.

Metzger shouted, “The Rat Patrol!” as Dietrich’s gunners leaped to their posts to return fire.

Schmied’s men began to shoot as well, but Metzger could see that they had never tried to shoot at a weaving, vanishing-and-reappearing enemy. Schmied watched with jaw-clenched fury, and it was easy enough to guess his thoughts: it would be intolerable if his better trained sharpshooters did not get to claim the kill!

Schmied had ducked behind the door of his limousine. He yelled over his shoulder at Metzger, “You and your company are dismissed. We will demonstrate how to deal with this rodent.”

Then he gestured violently to the lead vehicle to follow the weaving, darting jeep.

Metzger pelted back down the column, keeping his head low, as the engines in the forward part of the convoy revved. Metzger caught up with the Schloss, and hoisted himself up to face Oberleutnant Fischer. “That’s the Cowboy out there,” Fischer said.

“ _Jawohl_ ,” Metzger replied. “The SD are separating off.”

“ _Ja doch_ ,” Fischer said in disbelief. But Metzger noticed he wasn’t trying to argue. Then Fischer waved behind him, bawling, “Halt!”

The machine gunners stopped shooting.

Everyone waited in silence as Fischer watched Schmied's vanishing company through his binoculars. He said after a minute or two had passed, ”Does Schmied know that’s a lure? What’s going on? What did HQ say again?”

Metzger had had time to think. He’d recognized his captain’s voice pretending to be HQ over the radio—after Schmied had told everyone that Hauptmann Dietrich was dead.

It seemed impossible that the radio dispatch and the sudden appearance of the Rat Patrol were coincidental, but he could not imagine how they could connect. All he knew was, that  _verdamnte Scheissnase_ Schmied was moving away fast, and had given them orders not to follow. So as far as he was concerned, the less said the better. “We’ve orders to return to base.”

“ _Jawohl_ ,” Fischer said, this time with a crisp certainty that everyone in earshot understood.

Dietrich’s men waited another minute or two, hands ready at weapons as the swerving maniac vanished in the distance, peppering shots at Schmied’s detachment.

When it was clear that the Berserker wasn’t going to show up to strafe them, Fischer flicked on his flashlight and pulled out the map to recheck their route. Then he gave the signal everyone had hoped for, pumping his fist twice and jabbing stiff fingers toward the northeast and home base.

The vehicles rumbled into motion, alone after two days that had seemed an eternity.

* * *

Moffitt curled around his weapon with the ease of habit as Tully bumped and jolted them over the sand. Moffitt had unfolded their map in the rosy-gold dying light, but he recognized where he was along what had once been a great travel route between the two vast oceans of sand.

Now only the Bedouin knew the route in the ever-changing landscape, or maybe it was their camels who knew, smelling centuries of droppings ground into dust—for them as sure a map as anything humans had ever made.

The jeep rattled over a submerged rock, causing Engel to let out a hissing groan. Moffitt crouched down, swaying with the vehicle. _“Hast du Durst?”_

 _“Nehn,_ ” the man murmured in his Austrian accent, and mumbled his thanks.

Moffitt went on, “You will soon eat well. Probably better than any of the rest of us,” he added with acerb cheer. “The Amis don’t have food rationing.”

In the fading twilight, Moffitt saw Engel’s teeth bare in what might have been an attempt at a laugh. He said in German, “I hear . . . they eat beef . . . morning noon and night.”

“Bacon,” Moffitt replied in English. “Ah . . . _Speck_.”

 _“Grossartig,”_ Engel murmured, and at another jolt he subsided, perhaps passed out.

“He has lost much blood,” came Dietrich’s voice from the front.

“Tully did a good job of patching him up,” Moffitt replied, lifting his voice. “He’ll do until we can get him to the medics.” And, because the German captain seemed to be waiting for something, he added, “Are you looking forward to a restful trip to North America?”

In the dim light, Dietrich’s expression—never very revealing in Moffitt’s experience—was impossible to interpret. He’d probably taken Moffitt’s attempt at conversation as taunting; Moffitt had never actually conversed with the German. Their encounters had always been martial, except during tense and temporary truce.

He was not surprised when Dietrich did not answer, and Moffitt turned his gaze to the horizon, to watch for danger as one by one the stars emerged into brilliance overhead.

 * * *

Now that there was a plan in action, Dietrich had, for the first time, leisure to think ahead. That leisure was relative: at least he was out from under Troy’s observant eye, but Moffitt, at least as observant, crouched a meter or two away, and worse, he seemed to want to chat. Was he suspicious?

Dietrich turned away, determined not to provide any more reason for doubt. He needed to consider his next step.

During Moffitt’s and Engel’s conversation, short as it was, Engel’s lack of resistance struck him. True, the driver was delirious from his wound, exacerbated by the bullets still in him, and the heat, but even so, Dietrich knew his men. Engel had not sounded the least discouraged at the prospect of a long journey to a North American prison camp. Furthermore, if Dietrich was honest with himself, the outrage he knew he ought to feel at such disloyalty . . . wasn’t there.

It was a peculiar feeling. Even more was this sense of helplessness, forced to sit passive as an operation was carried out around him. He could not control its direction. He was baggage, like Engel, destined to sit out the rest of the war on the other side of the Atlantic. Apparently in relative comfort, according to all the rumors. In North America, he would removed from the increasingly insistent doubts about Germany’s leadership.

Rommel was a beacon in the storm, but this war in North Africa was not going to last—not with the Amis having joined it. Anyone with a modicum of strategic understanding could see that they had tipped the balance.

Further, there were rumors from those Dietrich trusted that Hitler held hostage the families of many in high command. Everyone already knew he didn’t trust the old army. That was why curs like Heydrich and Himmler gained so much power with their pretend armies.

But Dietrich could not change any of that. So it was either duty and a continued existence of conscious blinkering—or to let it all go. He had been honorably captured, and by enemies he respected. The Americans heeded the Geneva Convention. His life would be easy, decision taken away.

That was the sticking point, he thought a moment before Private Pettigrew yelled, “Sarge.”

“Yes,” Moffitt murmured. “I see them. Take it slow.”

The private downshifted and at a sedate pace took them the last mile. Dietrich made out pale, uneven shapes a mile or two ahead, jutting like broken teeth. These soon resolved into the ruins of the typical low, pale stone houses found throughout the region: they had arrived at a abandoned village.

Pettigrew drove quietly through the darkness until a winking light straight ahead caused him to slow further.

Six or seven dark-clad figures emerged from a building; a flashlight beam played sideways, revealing commandos in dark clothing, each with machine gun in hand, trained on the new arrivals.

At a bark from someone, the guns were lowered, and Moffitt leaped down, his rapid footsteps crunching before he drew to a halt and threw off a crisp salute. “Captain Canning?”

“Yes. Moffitt, is it?” drawled a British voice. “What do you have there?”

“Two prisoners, sir,” Moffitt stated. Then, in a lower voice, “They were part of the enemy company, but did not take part in either atrocity.”

“I see,” Canning replied, as the flashlight briefly illuminated him, a short, stocky, trim man with a bristling red moustache, and a grimly skeptical expression. “So you were eye-witness, were you?”

Moffitt hesitated, then said flatly. “No, sir.”

“I see,” Canning said again, and Dietrich noted with bleak humor the range of expression those two words could reveal. “We shall hold them in that cellar there, until they can be properly sorted. Jaffe! Kirk! Bind their feet. Gag them. Put them in C-Hut’s cellar for now, and tidy away that jeep.”

Two men directed Pettigrew to pull the jeep up to a building on the other side of the square built around an ancient well. Moffitt followed in silence, and stood by in equal silence as the English commandos rope-bound Dietrich’s boots, gagged him, and then attended to poor Engel.

Moffitt then said, “Here, I’ll help carry. Tully, you take Engel. Watch the shoulder.”

Moffitt stuck his hands under Dietrich’s arms, and hoisted him up, betraying no effort; as Dietrich had assumed, the Englishman, though built like a reed, was deceptively strong. A commando took hold of his legs. As Dietrich was carried away, he caught a last glimpsed of shrouded figures laying palm fronds over the back of the jeep.

They bumped down into a cellar that smelled of ancient goat piss and rotted olives, then Dietrich found himself painfully dumped on his side, Moffitt either accidentally or on purpose wrenching his hands, sending pain shooting up into his shoulders.

The purposeless malice in the gesture took Dietrich by surprise. Did Moffitt think that Canning had somehow come up with proof that Dietrich had been involved in the shooting of those prisoners? It had been obvious that Canning believed it.

 _They’re going to stand us against a wall and shoot us._ For something he had not actually done, and yet, were not all Germans complicit in what the Reich carried out in its war of expansion? That was the real question—and one he could not answer.

Nor should he. Duty first.

In the few seconds it took for these thoughts to stream through his mind, Engel was laid at the other end of the cellar, then the British trooped up the steps, and away, leaving the Germans in darkness.

Dietrich grunted as he made an effort to roll over, his intent to wiggle across the wet, filthy ground to check on Engel. But when he shifted his arms, he paused in surprise—somehow the belt loop he’d worked at so painfully, achieving a few millimeters of loosening, had gained a significant hump. It was wide enough for Dietrich to curl his little finger into. Struggling with effort as his strained arms sent shoots of pain up the nerves into his skull, he worked his little finger determinedly into the loop . . . until, with a sudden sense of ease, it gave. The belt tongue slipped out of the hole, and the whole dropped away, leaving Dietrich’s hands free.

For a minute or two he lay there, his hands feeling like goalie gloves. He worked his sausage-like fingers as the pins and needles sensation of returning blood restored the ability to move them. Then he sat up and began tearing at the ropes around his feet, then the gag.

Accident—or had Moffitt loosened that belt? No one there to answer, of course, and it didn’t matter right now.

 He moved to Engel’s side. The man’s skin was hot and clammy. Not a good sign. Dietrich worked the gag loose first as Engel seemed to be struggling to breathe, then rapidly freed arms and legs, grimacing when his fingers brushed the bandage and felt fresh wetness.

“ _Geh mal,_ ” Dietrich whispered. Let's go.

Engel wheezed a weak laugh. “It was a nice dream, eh?”

Dietrich understood at once. Contemplating that distant, safe, comfortable American POW camp had been no more than a pleasant mirage. Apparently Engel agreed, whatever his motivation. Maybe it was as simple as duty, or as difficult—maybe impossible—as recognition that, whatever the future held for this war, it would be wrong to abandon Germany to the Schmieds. 

Engel’s breath hissed as Dietrich slid an arm under him and lifted him to his feet. Before they’d gone two steps, the roar of an engine racing into the village heralded the arrival of Sergeant Troy.

“A big effort now, Engel. Come.” Dietrich took most of the man’s weight, and they worked up the slippery stone steps, pausing between each as Engel fought for breath.

There they halted, Engel collapsing against the wall, drenched with fever sweat as Dietrich peered past the palm-covered jeep blocking the door. At least it provided cover. Dietrich spied British commandos perched on walls and roofs, all faces turned toward the west, just as the Rat Patrol jeep roared past, tires kicking up sand, Troy braced on the back firing behind.

Schmied’s convoy rumbled into the square in pursuit. When the entire convoy had entered the village, the British opened up with their weapons.

The inexperienced SD convoy, utterly taken by surprise, rumbled to a stop as men scrambled for their weapons. Where was their commander?

Schmied’s big black car halted not fifty meters from Dietrich’s position, Schmied clearly visible in the back, hands held high. Bullet holes riddled the side of the car, the windscreen spider-webbed with cracks. But he seemed unharmed. Had he really surrendered that easily?

As Dietrich watched, a pair of British commandos leaped to open the car doors, front and back. The driver fell out, landing in the dirt, obviously dead.

Schmied sat frozen in the back. Dietrich heard his voice rising shrilly.

Overriding him, a British soldier shouted, “Throw your weapon down!”

Schmied bent, then tossed his sidearm out.

“Hands high.”

Schmied placed his hands on the back of the seat in front of him.

From the other end of the village garish orange light flared, followed by the concussion of an explosion. The two commandos looked up sharply. One yelled, “Stay put!” and bent to retrieve Schmied’s sidearm. Then they raced off to someone one’s aid as machine fire stuttered.

Dietrich knew what duty required—but as he pulled his arm away from Engel, he wondered, again, how to justify duty and conscience.

 He loped toward the limousine, pausing beside the still-open front door, as the engine purred.

Dietrich bent to check the fallen driver. Definitely dead. His fingers brushed the grip of the driver’s sidearm, caught between the man’s arm and ribs. Dietrich pulled the weapon free. Then, straightening up, he faced the back seat, where Schmied still sat, his face a rictus of fear and anger, side-lit by distant fires.

Schmied’s eyes shifted, then widened when he saw Dietrich, who knew his duty. Braced to do it.

Time stopped, dust motes floating, pinpoints of golden light.

“You can’t be still alive,” Schmied exclaimed, and then, "Where are my men? Why aren't they here to cover me?"

"They are under fire," Dietrich stated.

Schmied's face purpled as he fumbled for his cigarettes and the golden lighter. "I'll have the cowards shot! Their first duty is to me!"

 _Your first duty is to them._ Dietrich bit the words back, knowing he should not have to say them, and that he would only get fury as a response. He'd heard the conviction in Schmied's voice when he said he'd have his men shot, and he saw the future: himself forced to testify against his own countrymen on Schmied's behalf. Twisted truth and betrayal, and always, always that hatred, in the name of Himmler's vision of glory.

 Dietrich’s hand came up as if controlled by someone else a distance away, and thumbed off the safety catch. He heard his own voice as he listened to a radio station from another world, “This is for Germany.”

And he fired.

A bullet hole appeared between Schmied’s stark, staring eyes. He slammed back against the fine leather seat, the golden lighter falling from his loose fingers, and his cap rolling off his head to fall into the dirt outside the car. As Dietrich had surmised, the man was almost entirely bald on top.

Time snapped into flow again, fast as a speeding train. The noise of fighting, explosions, surrounded Dietrich, who yanked Schmied’s leather-covered arm and stepped back. Schmied’s corpse fell out of the car. Instinct prompted Dietrich to pick up the cap and set it on Schmied's head, though he could not have said why he did it.

The sounds of battle had shifted to the west. The thunder of his own heartbeat drummed in his ears as Dietrich started back to fetch Engel.

He halted as Engel tottered the last few steps toward him, then began to sway on his feet. Dietrich ran to his support, and together they made it back to the limousine. Dietrich paused to cast his eyes over it: black, invisible in the night. This might even be possible.

He settled Engel into the front seat, shut the door, then ran around in three swift steps and slid into the driver’s seat.

The engine was still running. Dietrich shut off the headlights, eased the car into first gear, and cranked the wheel. He nosed it past the frond-covered jeep, into an alley beside the cellar hut, an alley so narrow that the side mirrors bent, then scraped off the car.

He kept going, kept going, kept going, braced any moment for the relentless artillery fire he could hear going on behind him, until the only noise was the purr of the powerful engine, and the pounding of his own heart.

* * *

“What d’ya mean, Dietrich got away?” Troy demanded. “I thought you guys had him tied up and stashed.”

Moffitt raised his hands. “You and Tully didn’t see him, either.”

“Yeah, we were tangling with those SOBs on the halftrack.”

“Just so,” Moffitt said evenly.

Troy shrugged. It wasn’t an American operation—Boggs had made it plain he was lucky the British had been willing to cooperate with his crack-brained plan. He suspected that they had only gone along with it because Troy had spotted their mass murderer, and they were determined not to let him slither away.

Well, Schmied was dead, and the survivors of his company were now in the hands of the Tommies, heading for trial. And since Dietrich had somehow gotten away, the Rats wouldn’t even be put in the position of having to defend an enemy that they found a pain in the ass more often than not.

“Ah, the hell with it.” As Hitch pulled his goggles down, and jammed his cap tighter over his head, Troy said, “Let’s move it. First beer’s on me.”

* * *

Dietrich scarcely had time to get a meal and cleaned up before the expected summons came: report to Colonel Leimer at HQ.

On the long drive, he had plenty of time to compose his report, deciding what to put in—and what to leave out. This he delivered while standing at attention before Colonel Leimer’s desk.

The colonel listened with pursed lips and a two deep lines between his sandy brows. When Dietrich finished, he said, “Half his company annihilated, the rest packed off to be tried by some British military tribunal for war crimes. This is not the sort of thing I like reporting to Berlin.”

_“Jawohl, Herr Oberst.”_

“I gather you didn’t see exactly what happened to Schmied in the chaos of your escape? Just as well, all things considered. The important thing is, you _did_ escape. I need my officers, and between you and me, it was a bad business from the start, more . . . shall we say, misunderstandings in communication.” The colonel paused, frowned into the middle distance, and grunted. “That will be all, captain.”

 _“Jawohl, Herr Oberst,”_ Dietrich said, knowing that he was not the only one tiptoeing into a future strewn with moral minefields.

 _One step at a time_ , he thought as he fell tiredly into his familiar staff car—still bullet-riddled—and his new driver began the long, hot trip back across the desert.

He arrived without incident, caught up on his sleep, then returned to find his desk piled high with dispatches, supply reports, and repair requests. Business as usual.

A few days later, he signed off on another mercy visit by the Red Cross, who were coming through on another of their sporadic tours. Then he forgot all about them until his orderlies appeared in his office, carrying something heavy between them.

They set it down gently—almost reverently—and Dietrich rose, question lifting his brows.

“The Red Cross said it was sent to your attention, Herr Hauptmann,” Kleiner said. “No sender, but I think they picked it up at one of the enemy camps.” He indicated a slat, where the nails had been pried up. “We couldn’t read the Italian all over the side, and Scheibe was suspicious—thought there might be explosives in there. But it’s all French wine, Herr Hauptmann.” And then, in a low, respectful voice, “Champagne.”

Dietrich leaned against his desk, crossed his arms, and stared down at a full case of 1921 Chateau d’Yquem, a spectacular year.

Surprise was followed by a distinct impulse to laugh. He made an effort and hid both.

“Thank you. Put it with the supplies. We’ll save it for a holiday, then, shall we?”

Kleiner and Lessing responded with barely concealed enthusiasm, _“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann!”_

Dietrich remained where he was as the men bent to pick up the case with the care they would give to a case of grenades.

There was no possibility a British sergeant could afford that on his wages—or even a British and an American sergeant going shares. This had to have been liberated from Italian officers, those notorious gourmands.

A typically audacious salute by the Rat Patrol, and their mobile . . . it seemed an injustice to call them pirates. From a certain point of view, better unexpressed, Moffitt, Troy, and their free-wheeling drivers were evidence that honor and decency perhaps did still exist, though sometimes they seemed ephemeral—just out of reach.

As he watched the case vanish out the door, he thought, at least there was definitely humor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
